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Full-Stack Marketing: Why All Digital Marketers Need To Go Full Stack

Being an FSM means having knowledge of an extensive range of marketing techniques

I’ve been Futureheads’ Social Media Executive for a few months now, but my role expands beyond social media marketing and covers content and email marketing too. I’ve also learnt the joy of a good spreadsheet as I pour over data to work out what marketing strategies work for us.

But even this is not enough. I realise now that I need to know more about SEO and web analytics to get a more holistic view of the company’s marketing efforts. To stay on top of things, I deepen my knowledge about these disciplines and keep an ear to the ground for all new and complementary strategies to digital marketing.

Recently, I came across a great article by Spinnakr.com on the future of digital marketing, which piqued my interest in full-stack marketing (FSM). You might not have heard this term before, but you’re probably familiar with ‘full stack developer’. The same concept applies to marketing.

Though FSM has been around for some time, Bislr’s Gonzalo Mannucci claims that ‘full-stack marketing is a trend with staying power.’ This quote really got me thinking about what the future holds for digital marketers and so I decided to blog about why digital marketers need to adopt the full stack approach.

What Is Full Stack Marketing?

Full stack marketing (FSM) describes a marketer who is a jack-of-all-trades, acquiring customers by making use of all levels of the marketing ‘stack’. So, as a full stack marketer, you are analytical, a bit of a tech geek and have great working knowledge of all modern marketing tactics - from email marketing and social media to copywriting and SEO!

Though often confused with growth hacking, full stacking marketers do not solely focus on growth. FSMs concentrate more on how marketing can help grow a business and their skills extend beyond marketing to some technical knowledge in coding, HTML, CSS & JS etc.

I see full stack marketing as an entrepreneurial approach to marketing. Today’s digital marketers need to thrive in an innovative and fast-paced culture anywhere. In fact, the demand for FSMs is especially high in the start-up space because of their ability to create and execute integrated growth strategies with limited external resources - all on their own.

As marketing continues to become more data-driven, the need for analytical (as well as technical) digital marketers has sharply increased. Developing such skills will not only make you an all-rounder in your field but will greatly increase your employability.

Eric Metelka of Fullstackmarketing.co adds to this and claims that "there’s a lot of movement around data science and learning how to code and both of these will bleed into marketing for the better."

How Can You Become A Full Stack Marketer?

Just to reiterate the point - full stacking marketing is NOT growth hacking. They seem similar but actually have very different goals. Don’t get them confused.

Growth hacking is all about growing your business – in whichever way possible and as quickly as possible. But FSM pays more attention on being fluent in multiple marketing techniques and making use of them to grow your business.

So now we’ve got that cleared up, let’s talk about how you can broaden your skill set and become a full-stack marketing machine!

Being an FSM means having knowledge of an extensive range of marketing techniques and I’ve rounded up a list of some useful resources to help you get started:

SEO - Moz Blog is a great place to learn about search engine optimisation (SEO) and it offers a lot of advanced SEO tips.

PPC – If you don’t know much about pay-per-click advertising, check out PPC Hero.

Analytics ­­- If you’re not great at analysing marketing data, Occam’s Razor is a good place to start learning about it.

Affiliate Marketing - Geno Prussakov is considered the leader in affiliate marketing. Check out his blog on affiliate marketing for some great advice.

This list might seem a bit overwhelming at first, but you can always dive into one channel and understand how it works before moving on to the next. Remember- a good full stack marketer never stops learning because things keep changing in the technology space and it’s important to keep up.

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